Film Review

Mosquito State (2020) • Shudder

Swarms of mosquitoes start to infest the apartment, and mind, of a Wall Street analyst as he worries about an impending stock market crash

Polish-American filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza’s first directorial outing since 2007 (he’s been producing in the interim) is set on the eve of the 2007–08 market crisis, but don’t expect a factual drama like Margin Call (2011) or The Big Short (2015). Mosquito State has more of the surreal, sinister air of films like Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy (2013), and while there’s certainly a good dollop of Cronenbergian body horror, it’s not a horror movie in the conventional sense. It’s tough to slot into any genre, really, and much of its meaning is elusive, but the difficulty in figuring out what to make of it contributes to its disturbing effect.

It opens as it means to go on, with extreme close-ups of mosquito larvae (presumably CGI, but inevitably recalling the amazing ant photography by Ken Middleham in Saul Bass’s equally disquieting 1974 sci-fi horror Phase IV).